


Hyperbole and a Homestuck

by chelonianmobile



Category: Homestuck, Hyperbole and a Half
Genre: Comedy, Crossover, Gen, Humanstuck, Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:56:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelonianmobile/pseuds/chelonianmobile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kinkmeme request for a crossover. Future installments may or may not be forthcoming. Part 1: "Woooooooolves!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hyperbole and a Homestuck

Vriska sourly reflected that this was the first time she'd ever seen the kids get bored of Princess Celestia's Tea Party before the babysitter did. Nepeta's and Kanaya's mothers both being busy in the kitchen, Horuss had been left to watch the birthday girl and the assortment of children in attendance, and had set up the pony dolls immediately. Vriska hated My Little Pony, and had sat sulkily down with the proffered toy, resenting Nepeta for having fun; at least she wasn't anymore. Horuss was notoriously weird, and was alternating between providing squeaky voices for the ponies with a far happier attitude than Vriska thought it was healthy for a thirteen-year-old boy to openly show about such a thing, and breaking off to ramble about the biology of actual horses, the history of tea-making, or something else equally boring.

"Think we can change the game?" Vriska whispered to Equius. The only male child at the party, he was hunched up awkwardly at the tiny table beside his brother, trying to hide behind his prescription shaded lenses.

"I think it might be time," he whispered back. "Any ideas?"

"I might... Does your dad know he's this keen on ponies?"

"Dad says anyone who objects to anything we do can talk to him." Vriska winced; Mr Zahhak was terrifying even to grown-ups, and she doubted anyone ever would object to his face. "And he says he'll probably grow out of it."

Nepeta overheard them, leaned across the little pink table, right under Horuss' nose, and was about to say something when Horuss pushed her gently back. "Don't lean across the table, it's not polite. Oh, where was I? Oh yes..." Nepeta scowled at him and at the card from him on the mantlepiece; it said "Happy 6th Birthday", the 6 crossed out in blue marker and replaced with a 7. The kids were fairly sure he'd bought that one because it had a creepily grinning cartoon horse on it. Fond as Nepeta was of his little brother, she was not at this moment feeling well-disposed to Horuss, and Vriska knew they had an ally.

"Well, this has been fun!" Vriska said loudly and insincerely, letting Pinkie Pie fall to the carpet. "I think Nepeta wants to play a new game now, and it's her birthday so we should!"

"Yeah!" Nepeta burst in before Horuss could object. "Let's go outside! C'mon, you always say we need exercise!" She waved at the French windows, beyond which lay the forest, dark in its deepest parts but now vivid green with the summer evening sun in the leaves.

Horuss took off his thick round glasses and polished them on his sleeve. "Hm, well, yes, I suppose that's a good idea. Anything you particularly want to play?"

Vriska's grin widened wickedly. _"Wolves!"_

Kanaya stopped brushing her Rarity doll's hair and looked up, eyes wide. Terezi, Aradia, and Feferi gasped and giggled, and all repeated the word, drawing out the vowel in a howl. "Wolves! Wolves! _Woooooooolves!"_ Equius looked nervous.

"How do you play 'wolves'?" Horuss asked Vriska.

"We're the wolves, and you get to be the stag-"

"No, the _horse!"_ Feferi interrupted. She knew which buttons to push; Horuss' eyes lit up at the word. "And you run away and we chase you!"

"Horses don't live in forests," Equius complained.

"We can pretend!"

"Actually, the earliest ancestors of horses, such as Eohippus, were indeed adapted to live in-"

Recognising the beginning of another boring lecture, Vriska cut him off. "So do you wanna play or not?"

Horuss led the procession of children out to the forest, carefully put his glasses in their case in his pocket, tightened his ponytail, and cleared his throat. "So, you simply want me to run, and you chase me?"

"Or you can hide," Aradia said, shrugging. "We have to catch you either way. But first we count to thirty."

"One..." Nepeta started, and the others joined in one by one. "Two... Three..."

Horuss stood on his toes in an attempt to imitate a horse's stance and pranced off behind the nearest tree, chuckling quietly. "Ah, don't get overconfident, kiddies! I was quite good at hide and seek when I was your age!" Despite this statement, he was quite obviously letting them win; by the time they reached twenty-five, he was happily settled behind a tree not wide enough to hide him and not showing any signs of further movement. The girls scampered straight up to him after the count was finished, dancing around his legs and squeaking "Found you!"

Horuss struck a pose, still on tiptoe, ponytail flowing, arms up, and he did look very much like a rearing horse for a moment. "Ah, alas, the noble stallion has met his match! Good work, little w-"

They swarmed him teeth-first, and he went down shrieking.

"Horses don't scream!" Vriska told him, briefly removing her teeth from his wrist.

"What? Of course they do!" Equius protested, watching his brother's defeat from several feet away, arms calmly folded.

"Well, they certainly don't say 'ow'!"

Horuss stubbornly failed to stop breaking the verisimilitude, thrashing and shouting until he ended up with a mouthful of leaf mould. In desperation he looked at Kanaya, the best-behaved and quietest of the children, only to see her eyes twinkling happily as she gnawed on his ankle.

"Okay, that's thirty seconds!" Equius finally shouted.

"It was not!" Terezi yelled back.

"Yes it was! I was counting!"

"Well, count out loud next time!" Aradia whined, climbing off Horuss' back and picking long hairs out of her teeth.

Horuss' eyes widened. "Next time?"

"One!" Terezi started.

"Two!"

"Aheh, uh, I think I want to stop playing."

"Three!"

"Equius, tell them to stop! Go get Ms Maryam!"

Equius shook his head and said "Four."

"This is because I told Damara you like Aradia, isn't it?!"

"Five... Six..."

Horuss bolted. Unfortunately for him, being his grade's track star three years in a row had only prepared him for running on straight and unobstructed tracks, not through knee-deep undergrowth and randomly arranged trees in an unfamiliar area of the local forest. He stumbled and wobbled off into the woods, twisting his ankles in holes and hitting his head on branches. The children finished their count and loped after him, much more familiar with the area and better suited to making their way through the obstacles.

~

"I'M HOME!" Meulin pranced through the door in a swirl of green dress, basket on her arm, like a colour-inverted Red Riding Hood. Ms Leijon emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a teatowel.

"Careful with that!" she said, reaching for the basket. Meulin unhooked it from her arm and handed it over, smiling. Ms Leijon opened the box within, and smiled; the cake was in the shape of Hello Kitty and smelled pleasantly of vanilla, just as Nepeta had wanted. "Perfect." The two returned to the kitchen and Ms Leijon set the cake on a platter for later presentation.

Ms Maryam looked up from stirring the pasta sauce on the stove. "This is just about ready, would you mind calling the children in?" she said, enunciating carefully so Meulin could read her lips.

Meulin nodded, skipped outside and to the edge of the forest, filled her lungs, and howled _"FOOOOOOOOD!"_

Deep in the wood, Horuss had just lost again. Vriska was quite impressed; he was obviously in a great deal of pain, bleeding in numerous spots (less from the biting and more from impacts with trees and branches during his escape attempts), but had managed to stop screaming in the hopes that the children would get bored quicker that way. His eyes were squeezed shut and watering as Terezi chewed experimentally on his nose, and he was humming "The Star-Spangled Banner" between his own gritted teeth. He had struggled quite hard the first few times, but was hampered by his fear of injuring his tiny attackers, and had given up. Neither threatening nor pleading had had any effect either, and he now seemed resigned to trying to make his way back to the house. Unfortunately for him, he'd got turned around somehow, and Vriska was aware he was heading in the wrong direction, not that she was going to tell him that. While gnawing his fingers, she took the opportunity to steal his watch. Equius stood back, looking somewhere between worried and smug, counting the prize time. "Fourteen... Fifteen..."

Nepeta perked up and sniffed the air, like a real predator. "Guys, wait! Can you hear that?"

The group paused, listening to the faint sound echoing through the trees.

_... FOOOOOOOOD..._

The children disappeared in the direction of the sound, leaving their battered victim alone.

~

Ms Maryam settled the children at the table and started dishing up spaghetti and meatballs. "One, two, three... wait, did Horuss not come in with you?"

"He's fine," said Feferi, eyes on the ladle of spaghetti just out of her reach above her plate.

"It's getting quite late, isn't he hungry?"

"He's fine," Equius repeated. "Did you remember I need tofu meatballs?"

Ms Maryam nodded, tutted, and remembered to put the spaghetti on Feferi's plate before she dropped it. "His food will get cold, he should come back in."

Ms Leijon glanced outside, and frowned. "I don't see him, are you sure he's okay?" she asked.

Nepeta swallowed her mouthful and looked up, paper hat wobbling on her hair. "He's fine."

It didn't take long for the children to finish their first course, but by the time little fingers were wiping up the last smears of sauce from the kitten-patterned paper plates, Ms Leijon was already seriously worried. It was summer, so it wasn't dark or too cold, but there was a stiff breeze coming up, and she knew Horuss would probably be hungry by now.

"Meulin, Rosa, could you keep an eye on the kids? I'm going to look for him."

~

"Horuss? Horuss!" Ms Leijon tramped through the undergrowth, Horuss' jacket under one arm in case he wanted it when she found him. Evening sunlight streamed in patches through the trees, but the woodland was shadowy and eerie nonetheless, the cool breeze whistling through the trees and chilling her despite the season. She was becoming distressed. He couldn't be that badly lost, surely? "Horuss!" she shouted again.

A thin, frightened voice returned her call. "Are they gone?"

Horuss was huddled between two large tree roots, back to the tree as if it would protect him from something. His glasses were off, his hair askew, and his sleeves rolled down firmly over his hands. When Ms Leijon drew closer, she saw he was covered in scratches and cuts and bruises.

"Oh, you poor thing!" she cried, dropping down next to him and throwing his jacket over his shoulders. "Were you out here looking for the kids? They're already back at the house."

"No."

"Well, come on, dear, let's get you cleaned up and fed..."

Horuss nearly bolted again when his entry into the dining room was greeted with a mob of little girls dancing around him again, cheering. "Yay, Mommy found him!" Nepeta squeaked, and Feferi took his hand and tried to kiss the bitemarks better. Meulin jumped up, ran to the kitchen, and returned with the first aid kit in one hand and a plate of spaghetti and tofu balls in the other, and Horuss ate very slowly and nervously, eyes darting from one child to the next.

"You missed me blowing out my candles," Nepeta said apologetically. "All _seven_ of them." Horuss scowled. "But we saved you the cake slice with Hello Kitty's bow because that's the best bit and you get a prize because you've been so much fun!"

"Ahem. Yes. Fun." Horuss coughed. "Ms Leijon, could you please call my father and tell him I'm going to need to drop in at the hospital on the way home? I think I need a tetanus shot." He turned his icy glare on his brother. "And possibly a rabies shot."

Equius shyly put the fondant from his cake on Aradia's plate and said nothing.


End file.
